Hey Von,
'Check this out.. That's black diamond on the second page isn't it?????? I think I remember tony saying someone owned it at stanage before him. It's famous.hahha'.....
Cheers

'Yeah I read this stuff all the time where people talk about only going on small tides and only being able to fish at the top and bottom of the tide..etc etc. I've been coming up now since 2005 and I fish the whole time I'm up there. when we come up for 10 days you have no choice but to fish big tides, there's always somewhere to fish. Was just thinking last week that the next time I come up I want to come either real early in the year or real late for whatever reason I have only ever been up there between April and October'.Eighteen months ago my mate John and I did a trip to Stanage Bay which was a bit of a disaster, due mainly to a major rain depression which dumped eight inches of rain on us in less than a couple of days.

The wind also never got below about twenty knots, which meant that getting out to the offshore islands as we intended, was not a proposition in my original boat, the Stacer 530. Whilst she was quite seaworthy in rough conditions, she was too rough riding in heavy conditions for us old blokes. So after a week or so checking out the waters of Thirsty Sound, Broadsound and the mainland rivers such as the Hoogly and the Styx we decided to give it away and come back another day. One of the things we were considering was an alternative to the 100 kilometres of dirt road into Stanage Bay from the highway, which was really bad last time we went in. The only other way in we thought, was to trail the boat to Clairview, a tiny township on the highway between Rockhampton and Mackay, and then travel across Broadsound by boat, to the western end of Thirsty Sound. We had intended to explore this end of Thirsty Sound as a mate who lives in Stanage, suggested that this area was a good place to start our explorations.

This also had the advantage of significant saving in fuel costs, as the distance by water was only about twelve nautical miles, whereas the distance by road, is over a hundred kilometres. The main problem with this plan is that the ramp at Clairview is facing the open sea and is limited to fifteen knots of breeze to use safely. However, the forecast was for 10/15 knots so we reckoned that we would be ok. An interesting fact about Clairview is that it is one of only three places where the highway runs alongside the sea in the two thousand kilometres or so between Brisbane and Cairns, the other two being Bowen and Cardwell. The other thing that needs to be considered is that this area has tides to nine metres, and the ramp is half a kilometre from the Fisherman & Boatowner 32 The Stanage Challe Loading a 28ʼ tri hull on the Stanage Bay ramp shows it can be done easily enough (at mid-high tide) but the skipper has to be totally focused on getting back in before the tide goes out . . !